hate to feel this die
by: like firing
we dream and dream of being seen
as we really are and then finally someone looks at us
and sees us truly and we fail to measure up.
— richard siken —
She had, asked, once, if you thought you'd ever want to die. You'd said, once, that death is an expectation but you're an anomaly. You'll live, of course. You'll live until you crash into the sun and you'll fall back in breathing pieces and you'll wish you'd have died.
This is not in your head, she'd whispered, and you'd laughed. There's that layer of mist that disconnects you from everyone else — the viscous imminent cloudiness of a day that will inevitably end with a downpour — but the rain falls around you like you repel it, like you cannot be cleansed. Of course it is all in your head. It's in hers, too, and she believes it.
Later, she'd asked if you knew this was all a dream. You'd given her that smirk, the one that had brought down buildings and revolutions, and said of course. It's all a dream and that is why you never want to die and let go. You never want to die. You never want to die. You will not die.
It's all in your head, she'd heard, until she woke up with blood on her hands and murder ringing in her ears.
It's a dream, she'd believed, until she fell down, down, down, until she could not get back up.
She could fly, she'd thought, until all she could see was the blood on the pavement and the blood in your eyes and the blood on her hands.
Sometimes the people we should fear the most are the ones closest to us.